Broadway Melody of 1936

Boy, what a difference a few years make! MGM hit the jackpot with its first Broadway Melody, a 1929 musical that, despite having won the Oscar for Best Picture, looks to us today as incredibly stilted with less than spectacular production values and frankly not even very good music at times. But a mere six years later, MGM pulled out all the stops for its second entry in the series, Broadway Melody of 1936, giving a woman who would soon become a staple of MGM musicals for the next decade her second major film role and the one that would make her a star: Eleanor Powell.

Despite 1936 boasting a story credit by Moss Hart, anyone looking for deep plots and even non-clichéd writing should know right off the bat that all of the Broadway Melodies are hardly Pulitzer Prize winning efforts (though 1938's entry is probably the best in that regard), so be prepared for the tried-and-true formula of the small town girl (Powell) making her way to the big city, where she hopes to catch the eye of her former boyfriend (Robert Taylor), who of course has become a major Broadway producer. She's helped in this regard by Taylor's secretary, a spunky Una Merkel. While all of this is unfolding there are a number of tangential characters, including Jack Benny in an atypical role as a Walter Winchell type gossip columnist, Buddy and Vilma Ebsen as a dancing duo who live at the same boarding house as Powell, as well as June Knight as an heiress (and momentary romantic decoy) Taylor uses in order to raise money for his production.

Of course it's all patently silly nonsense designed only to get us to various singing and dancing segments, but luckily Broadway Melody of 1936 is incredibly inventive, and even innovative, in this regard. In fact the opening production number, "I've Got a Feelin' You're Foolin'" has some remarkable process photography, including rear screen projection and split-screen, that results in some really fun and unusual effects for what could otherwise have been a pretty standard opening number. In fact this number won an Oscar for Best Dance Direction, a category that was actually a possibility back then when virtually every musical had at least one, and often-times several, big dance routines in it.

Featuring trunk songs by Arthur Freed and Nacio Herb Brown (several of which, like "You Are My Lucky Star," would be used and used again in MGM musicals for decades to come), the musical shows the burnished work of arranger Roger Edens and conductor Alfred Newman working at the height of their powers. The Ebsens and Powell both do some nice hoofing along the way, with Powell's soon-to-be trademark "full frontal" tapping with occasional high leg kicks on display in full flower. Obviously it made an impact on 1936 audiences, because she would repeat the technique for virtually all of her subsequent films. While as a performer she's still occasionally stiff and mannered, there's a sweetness and lightness to her persona that make her acting shortcomings easy to swallow, considering the technical prowess of her dancing. Taylor, though never a big favorite of mine, is relatively dashing and sings for the only time in his long career in this film. Ebsen, who seemed to make an early career out of playing less-than-bright hayseed types, is genial and goofy, while Merkel pretty much steals any scene she's in with her deft comedic timing and sarcastic retorts.

Video: The full frame black and white image shows typical damage, with scratches and abrasions throughout. Also expect quite bit of grain, especially in the opticals. There is however excellent contrast with good, deep blacks throughout.

Audio: The remastered mono soundtrack has very occasional pops and can be a bit on the tinny side (not unusual for this era), but is otherwise just fine. Both music and dialogue are very well reproduced, considering the age of the film. There is an English audio track and English and French subtitles.

Extras: The Technicolor short "Sunkist Stars in Palm Springs" provides a quaint look at star-gazing circa 1935. A color Harman-Ising cartoon, "To Spring," is featured, as is an excerpt from a "Leo on the Air" broadcast and the theatrical trailer.

Born to Dance

Jimmy Stewart, song and dance man? While that soubriquet may not immediately spring to mind when thinking of the venerable leading man, he does indeed sing and dance in 1936's Born to Dance which reunites some of the stars of Broadway Melody of 1936 and plops them down in a sailors on shoreleave plotline that will be utilized almost two decades later in another film in this set, Hit the Deck.

In this one, Eleanor Powell is a very slight variation of her Broadway Melody small town girl trying to get her big break in the world of Broadway. Una Merkel is once again her advocate in this film, although this time Merkel is the hostess/desk clerk at a "Lonely-Heart's Club" where Powell shows up early in the film. Stewart, Buddy Ebsen and Sid Silvers (who also co-wrote the film) play the sailors on leave who hook up with Powell, Frances Langford and Merkel (who actually plays Silvers' wife, whom he hasn't seen since virtually the night of their marriage four years ago due to his navy activities). There's also the standard subplot of the main set of lovers being kept from their appointed destiny by the connivings of the publicist of a movie star (Virginia Bruce), who decides his client's supposed "affair" with Stewart will make for good press, despite there being no relationship to speak of.

While there's little of the visual flair of Broadway Melody of 1936 in this film, there is one decided advantage: the score is by Cole Porter, and includes his standard "You'd Be So Easy to Love," which makes a nice duet for Powell (voiced by Marjorie Lane) and Stewart, as well as several specialty numbers, including the patently strange Bruce production number "Love Me, Love My Pekinese" (yes, you read that correctly). Several of the up-front production numbers have some cute instrumentation, featuring unusual accompaniment by massed ocarinas and harmonicas. There's also a specialty dance number by Georges and Jalna set to an instrumental version of Porter's classic "I've Got You Under My Skin," which is also sung in the film and which received an Oscar nomination for Best Song. While Stewart is certainly no world-class vocalist, his thin voice is nonetheless pleasant if not particularly strong, and he holds his own in the dance numbers, though notice how some of his two-shots with Powell are shown only from the waist up, a very telling use of camera placement.

The film is also aided immeasurably by some location, or at least outdoor, shooting, something that Hit the Deck 18 years later noticeably lacks. Therefore, the big production numbers on the gunboats look like they were at least shot outside if not actually on real boats, and the punchline to the Bruce number, where her dog falls in the Hudson, was obviously filmed on some location with a lot of water, if not in New York itself. The aerial shots of scores of sailors jumping into the river to save the dog are obviously not the product of a backlot tank (though there are some establishing shots of the boat later in the film that are obviously miniatures in a tank).

Powell and Stewart seem perfectly at ease with each other, while the subplot with Ebsen and Langford is really never developed (she's there at the beginning and then suddenly shows up again at the end). It's really the hilarious bickering interplay between Merkel and Silvers that steals this show, though Raymond Walburn as doddering Captain Dingby of the men's ship has some great moments as well.

Video: There's an unfortunate amount of damage, especially scratching, to this transfer. In fact at about 20 minutes in, in an ostensible "outdoor garden" set with Powell and Stewart, the scratching gets so bad you'd swear they're doing the scene in a torrential downpour. The good news is the damage, though bad, is limited to discrete sections of the film and there are long sections in between where things are relatively OK. There is more grain apparent on this transfer than some of the others, even some of the same vintage, but contrast is strong, with good, deep blacks and an excellent spectrum of whites and grays.

Audio:The remastered mono soundtrack actually sounds excellent for its age, with little of the boxiness that sometimes plagues these mid-30s releases. Orchestral passages are full, if somewhat compressed, and vocals all sound excellent. There are both English and French audio tracks, as well as subtitles in those languages.

Extras: There's a frankly funny short called "The Second Step," essaying an extra's attempts to become a star (the punchline being this is probably the biggest thing the actress ever did), and a politically incorrect cartoon with frogs in the guise of various African Americans, including Cab Calloway. Interestingly, Warner has chosen to go to warning screen about ethnic (sic--at least in terms of the short) stereotypes "that were wrong then and are still wrong" for both of these extras, which I found a little strange. There's also an audio outtake of "Easy to Love," and a 1936 Hollywood Hotel radio excerpt as well as the original trailer (which is interesting in that it names virtually all of the songs in the score, but excludes "I've Got You Under My Skin" and "Easy to Love," both of which quickly made it into the American Songbook pantheon of standards).

Broadway Melody of 1938

The differences between Broadway Melody of 1936 and Broadway Melody of 1938 are about as minor as those between their titles: many of the same cast and largely the same basic storyline combine for what actually becomes a superior entertainment to the predecessor, if only for its supporting player turns, notably by the legendary Sophie Tucker and a little ingénue by the name of Judy Garland, playing mother and daughter.

Yep, Taylor's the producer. Yep, Powell's the small-town girl you know is going to make good in Taylor's show. Yep, Ebsen is the terpsichorally gifted sidekick, though this time he's paired with George Murphy. However, 1938 works in some deliciously comic subplots including an operatic barber, a racehorse that once belonged to Powell, and Taylor's backers, played by a bumbling Raymond Walburn and an unusually conniving Binnie Barnes (who has eyes for Taylor despite, or perhaps because of, being married to Walburn). While the songs are once again largely the work of Freed and Brown, the real standouts this time around are not from the Freed/Brown trunk: Tucker's signature piece "One of These Days" and the song that would skyrocket Judy Garland to fame and fortune: "You Made Me Love You," famously sung to a scrapbook full of Clark Gable pictures.

The script of 1938 is noticeably snappier than the 1936 version, with some great throwaway lines. When Ebsen recounts his vaudeville days with Murphy, he tells Powell, "We may not have stopped the show, but we sure slowed it down for a while." Powell is also noticeably more at ease by this point in her career, and has a nice spunk that's actually more than a bit petulant in the early scenes, where she is prone to some near tantrum throwing. There are some great comic bits featuring various supporting cast, including Robert Benchley as Taylor's imbibing publicist and Billy Gilbert as a barber prone to malapropisms. Powell and Murphy have a nice tap duet, and then later do a non-tap routine that is more reminiscent of a classic Astaire-Rogers teaming wth Powell in a billowing skirt doing lots of turns and dips in Murphy's arms. A major finale features all of the lead players, including Garland and Ebsen tap-dueting, in the customary big production number.

Video: This full frame transfer has minimally less damage than 1936, though you will see the more than occasional scratch. There's also abundant grain, especially in the opticals--notice the difference in grain from the opening shots of the theater, where the marquee has obviously been superimposed, to the "clean" image once the superimposition is done. There is quite a bit of aliasing throughout this DVD transfer, especially on the minutely patterned suit jackets and ties that several of the men wear, as well are the more usual suspects like grillwork over windows.

Audio: Unfortunately there's quite a bit of sporadic damage to the soundtrack, including a grating, metallic screech during most of the higher frequency musical moments, especially noticeable on such songs as "Everybody Sing." Luckily it's less apparent on "You Made Me Love You." There are English and French audio and subtitle tracks.

Extras:There's an unintentionally funny short called "That Mothers Might Live," about a long-forgotten 19th century doctor who kept urging people to wash their hands so that germs would not kill the patients. No one believed him and he ended up in the Vienna Insane Asylum, where clean hands were probably the least of his worries. The short is notable for being directed by future legend Fred Zinnemann. There's also a Harman-Ising color cartoon "Pipe Dreams." The most interesting extras are probably the several alternate audio takes of "Everybody Sing," Garland's big production number, as well as several audio outtakes, most of which feature Garland. There are also a radio broadcast excerpt from "Leo on the Air" as well as the theatrical trailer.

Lady Be Good

1941's Lady Be Good has no relation to the Gershwin stage musical of the same name, other than having its title song (and "Fascinating Rhythm") purloined and sung repeatedly in the film. However, don't let that dissuade you from watching--Lady Be Good is actually one of the better films in this set, a sterling Freed unit production that mixes a storyline that for once doesn't have Eleanor Powell taking Broadway by storm with some truly spectacular dance sequences. Add to the Gershwins some great Kern/Hammerstein numbers (including their Oscar winning "The Last Time I Saw Paris") as well as Freed/Brown again, and you have a musical mélange that may not have stylistic continuity but which never fails to entertain.

This was an interesting casting session for MGM, which was attempting to gain Ann Sothern some traction in the big leagues after her Columbia and RKO years. Though her part is actually bigger, the MGM brass bet on Eleanor Powell's box-office appeal and gave her first billing. Sothern plays an aspiring lyricist who hitches her word-wagon to composer Robert Young, who just happens to be her boyfriend and, later, husband. Sothern proves her mettle early in the picture (which is told in flashback) when she sings a lyric she has written to a tune by Young which his regular partner Dan Dailey doesn't like. That makes for a musical match made in heaven and the two are off on a pop-chart success story. Powell portrays Sothern's best friend and performer in Sothern/Young shows, who is there to see the Sothern/Young marriage disintegrate when Young, flush with success, gets a fat head and, according to Powell, goes "Park Avenue."

Sothern, who saw her career largely consigned to A-film co-starring or B-movie leads in such lackluster efforts as the Maisie series, was actually an actress and singer of considerable merit. Sweet and saucy in equal measure, she provides a lot of the spark in Lady Be Good, and it emerges as one of her more fully fleshed out roles from this period. From a musically gifted family (her sister was Bonnie Lake, writer of many standards including "Sandman"), Sothern does her own singing here and while she may not be a Garland, she certainly has a nice enough timbre, with good control and some nice phrasing. It's fun to hear her early in the film take two opposite stylistic approaches with the first song she's supposedly writing with Young--her first take is a slow, heartfelt ballad, and then after she excitedly chimes in "I think it can swing," she takes it for a run around its 32 bars at a clipped pace, with some great syncopation.

The supporting cast is full of some MGM stalwarts as well as then-newcomers, including Lionel Barrymore as the Judge hearing details of the impending divorce between Sothern and Young, John Carroll as the singer who introduces their hit tunes, and a very young and lithe Red Skelton as their publicist.

Some incredible dance routines are really what set Lady Be Good apart from the always excellent MGM musical production line of this period. One has Powell dancing with her dog, the sort of gimmick for which MGM was famous, but the results here are outstanding and show Powell in an unusually acrobatic mode, with lots of handflips and cartwheels augmenting her always spectacular tapping. Of more interest to cultural historians are several specialty dances featuring the Berry Brothers, contemporaries (and competitors with) the Nicholases, but with more athleticism, which is abundantly on display. There's also the "big finale," which in this case is part of the flashback, and so, in an unusual twist for an MGM musical, doesn't wind up the picture. It does feature Powell doing a sinuous tap to a great boogie-woogie beat.

Lady Be Good triumphs mostly because of the very fact that it's not from the cookie-cutter Eleanor Powell mold. Powell, here more of a supporting player, does some fine work, but this film is largely Sothern's (and to a lesser degree Young's, who is affable but not especially magnetic), and she does a wonderful job bringing just the right amount of heart and occasional vinegar to her role.

Video: This full frame transfer is the best of the black and white features in this set, though you'll still notice occasional scratches and other blemishes. However, contrast is really excellent and grain is at a minimum.

Audio: The remastered mono soundtrack sounds really great--the frequent use of pianos shows none of the high frequency "wobble" that frequently hampers older soundtracks, and the rest of the fuller orchestral score is reproduced with some real punch. This film features only an English audio track, but has English and French subtitles.

Extras: The short on this film is a nice Technicolor travelogue called "Glimpses of Florida," that is minimally hampered by some slight focus and registration problems. There's also a color Ising cartoon, "The Rookie Bear," as well as an audio outtake of "I'd Rather Dance," a radio excerpt from "Leo on the Air," and the theatrical trailer.

Nancy Goes to Rio

Nancy Goes to Rio, a 1949 effort (released in 1950) made to capitalize on starlet Jane Powell's growing popularity, is less of a traditional musical than some of the others in this set, while still giving Jane the opportunity to vocalize on everything from Americana like "By the Light of the Silvery Moon" to a nice, if occasionally wee-bit strident, "Quando Men Vo'" from Puccini's La Boheme. The over-convoluted plot is a mishmash of quasi-farcical misunderstandings which, had there been a few more slamming doors and at least one cuckolded husband, could have come from a latter-day Moliere. Powell plays the daughter of actress Frances Elliott, a Broadway legend portrayed by Ann Sothern. When Sothern's producer and pet playwright secretly deem her too old to play the lead in the playwright's upcoming Rio-based play, they quickly decide that Nancy (Powell) would be perfect. That is the first layer of confusion, which is quickly added to by a slightly risqué subplot of Nancy venturing south to Brasil to visit Frances, where on a cruise a well-meaning stranger (Barry Sullivan), overhearing her rehearse lines from the play, comes to the conclusion that she's secretly pregnant. There are actually two or three more layers to the general chaos, including Sullivan becoming the romantic allure to both Powell and Sothern, before everything, as might be expected, works its way out to a happy ending, complete with high-soprano warbling by Powell.

The film is notable for its rare A-picture leading role for Sothern (though, truth be told, Nancy Goes to Rio is by MGM standards more of a B+ picture), who brings her inherent sweetness mixed with a certain insouciance to her depiction of an aging actress. Sothern again does her own singing in Nancy, and while she is not of the operatic quality of Powell, she acquits herself quite nicely. Louis Calhern provides some comic relief as Sothern's father and Powell's grandfather, a Broadway legend himself still attempting to woo young women with tales of his exploits on the stage. While Sullivan seems a bit on the smarmy side to me (as he almost always does), he's nicely understated and has one literal knockout scene with Calhern, which also provides Hans Conreid, as the family butler with some great deadpan comments as he arranges flowers while simultaneously dealing with Sullivan's recovery from being punched by Calhern.

More interesting to some viewers, especially those drawn in by the title, will be Carmen Miranda's performance, which for once is not relegated solely to specialty numbers (though she does do several of those, notably a lovely baixo toward the end of the picture), but actually allows her to essay a character, however broad and thickly accented. As always, she is charming and ebullient, with an ever-present twinkle in her eye that helps cut through some of the patently absurd plot machinations which hinge on her character.

Though the film veers uneasily between splashy production numbers (choreographed by Nick Castle) and seemingly off-the-cuff quieter moments between the characters, where they, as the actors they portray, gather 'round the piano and sing, and the plot is such that after a while one wants to literally scream at the screen "Just ask the obvious question!" to put the various confusions to rest, there's an underlying innocence and joie-de-vivre, however slight, that makes the 90-odd minutes pass quickly enough. Nancy Goes to Rio is certainly no classic, but it's bright, with some great Technicolor, breezy, and a suitable vehicle for the young and upcoming Powell.

Video: The full frame image is for the most part very clean, with few if any artifacts and excellent clarity and nicely saturated color. There are some appallingly bad stock shots of Rio that are instantly recognizable due to the sharp drop in video quality.

Audio: The remastered mono soundtrack sounds surprisingly spry, though the pre-records are all noticeably boxy with over-amplified reverb. The lush Conrad Salinger orchestrations come through loud and clear, and all dialogue is crisp. There is an English audio track and English and French subtitles available.

Two Weeks With Love

I got the distinct impression watching 1950's Two Weeks With Love that the MGM honchos were trying for another Meet Me in St. Louis, albeit this time with Jane Powell instead of Judy Garland. There's basically the same time period, the same familial dynamic, and the same wistful look at young love.

Powell in this one is one of the daughters of Louis Calhern and Ann Harding, who take their family on a vacation in the Catskills, where Powell, contrary to her parents' wishes, becomes involved with Ricardo Montalban. There's the usual generational gap trauma because the parents feel she's too young to be dating, let alone involved. In one of the more unintentionally funny moments, Harding tells Powell that she's still a child no matter how much she lengthens her skirts! How times have changed.

While Two Weeks With Love is the sort of wholesome family fare that some purists decry (and probably rightly so) they don't make them like anymore, the fact is as undeniably likable as the film is, it's really a second-tier MGM effort, full of public domain music and somewhat surprisingly, considering it was choreographed by Busby Berkeley, relatively little dance (though there is a nice tango toward the end with Powell and Montalban). What it does have is a surfeit of heart mixed with an always gentle humor, and a neat little performance by Debbie Reynolds as Powell's younger sister, in a sort of tomboyish portrayal that presages her work in The Unsinkable Molly Brown over a decade later. Reynolds' duet with Carleton Carpenter, "Abba Dabba Honeymoon," was a surprise hit and helped thrust Reynolds into the front rank of MGM ingénues.

Two Weeks With Love is nothing innovative, nothing too demanding but certainly always pleasant. It seems therefore to perfectly sum up MGM's goals circa 1950--some of the radical innovations of Freed and Minnelli were deemed too outré, especially after the failure of such films as The Pirate, and Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen's dance revolutions a la An American in Paris were still a little while off. This film was a place holder of sorts, perfectly fine for what it is, but nothing exceptional.

Video: The full frame Technicolor image is generally decent, if not spectacular, but is not as sharp as some of the other films in this set. Colors don't really pop for some of the film as they should (notice the outdoor scenes, especially), and there is occasional damage and grain, but this is still heads and shoulders above some of the Eastmancolor-filmed movies in this set.

Audio: The remastered mono soundtrack sounds excellent, though Powell's higher range, as always, can be a little on the thin side. Underscoring and dialogue are all clearly reproduced with no problems whatsoever. There is only an English audio track, but English and French subtitles offered.

Extras: In what is one of the better extras in this whole set, there's the TCM broadcast of Robert Osborne's "Private Screenings" interview with Jane Powell. Though Osborne can be cloying and fawning at times, Powell has some great reminiscences here which will delight fans. The black and white short is a Pete Smith specialty, "Crashing the Movies." There's also a color Tex Avery cartoon, "Garden Gopher," and the theatrical trailer.

Deep In My Heart

Despite its impressive pedigree and plethora of cameo appearances by the cream of mid-50s MGM talent, it's surprising that 1954's Deep in My Heart isn't better known or appreciated for its at least occasional charms. Though starting to show the bloat that would sink some other MGM musical vehicles of this era, the film, clothed in the standard romanticized biopic trappings that have been de rigeur< since musical films began, actually plays more like a revue, with a minimal, and minimally engaging, through-line built around the supposed life of operetta king Sigmund Romberg.

Right off the bat, we get an atypical start-up for a bid-budget, widescreen color MGM feature: after Leo emits his deafening roar, instead of the standard credits, we get a title which dedicates the film to "those who love the music of Sigmund Romberg," superimposed over an expansive shot of a symphony orchestra. The orchestra then plays the Overture for us, and it is only when finally the actual credits begin several minutes later that we get to see that the conductor is Jose Ferrer, portraying Romberg. This unusual technique has been used surprisingly sparely in musical films, perhaps most notably in the opening shots of the film version of Gypsy, almost a full decade after this film's release.

Anyone familiar with the liberties of biographical motion pictures, seemingly especially those about composers (Night and Day anyone?), will not be surprised to learn that the biographical elements, while loosely tied to Romberg's actual story, are really only there to get us to the next musical number. Therefore, we get a de facto and largely unrequited love interest based on Broadway actress and writer Dorothy Donnelly (Merle Oberon), with whom Romberg frequently collaborated (most notably on "The Student Prince") and, more interestingly, a restaurant owner played by the great Wagnerian soprano Helen Traubel, who does some really beautiful singing here, especially in a haunting slow version of Romberg's standard "Softly, As in a Morning Sunrise," given a completely inappropriate for this time period beguine arrangement that nonetheless works splendidly. It is no doubt the work of inspired arranger Roger Edens, who stepped up to the plate with full Producer credit for the first time with this film.

Edens, the legendary idea man behind most of MGM's brilliantly conceived musical numbers for the preceding almost two decades (and musical guidance counselor to such talents as Judy Garland) was routinely given Associate Producer credit on many MGM musicals, if only to recognize his invaluable contributions to the musical elements of those films. Here, though, his influence is felt, however tangentially, in a film that is subtly different than those produced by Arthur Freed, if only in terms of how much music is contained in the film. Where Freed, a storied songwriter himself, tended as a Producer to leave the actual song arrangements to others (oft-times Edens himself), Edens' brilliant touch is everywhere to be heard in this film, with striking reharmonizations and modernizations of Romberg's harmonic palette. On the other less musical hand, Deep in My Heart settles, for better or worse, for an often cartoonish portrayal of Romberg, however winningly played by Ferrer with equal parts cantankerousness and a winking self-effacement. Therefore you're apt to get such throwaway indicators as reverse word order ("Surprised I should be?") to subtly imply Romberg's Jewish heritage. This lack in the "book scenes" (to borrow a Broadway term) is more than made up for in the luscious musical interludes, which are all beautifully staged, gorgeously orchestrated (by MGM stalwarts Conrad Salinger and Alexander Courage) and for the most part well-sung by a who's-who of MGM talent (or at least their voice doubles). And even with the lack of anything beyond very broadly drawn characters, there are still some knockout scenes, especially in a hilarious tour-de-force by Ferrer who, in attempting to impress the woman who will become his wife (a very lovely and sort of younger Greer Garson-esque Doe Avedon), performs his new show in a one-man version to great comedic effect.

Ferrer, who while not a world-class singer at least acquits himself reasonably well under the circumstances, shows a surprisingly spry song-and-dance demeanor in several pieces in the film, somewhat belying the often dour persona he projects in many of his film roles. But it's really the cameo appearances where Deep in My Heart shines, two of which are historic. First, there's a teaming of Gene Kelly in a dance number with his brother Fred, who proves quite admirably that the dancing genes were not limited to just one sibling. Then there's the only filmed duet between then married Ferrer and Rosemary Clooney, performing the perfectly apt "Mr. and Mrs." Two other dance numbers are also notable, one featuring Ann Miller in a manic tap routine (did she do any other kind?), and Cyd Charisse in a sizzlingly erotic take on "One Alone" from "A New Moon." While these are both knockout numbers, they are so far removed from their source material and what any audience would have ever seen on the Broadway stage in the 1920s that those looking for historical accuracy had better keep looking.

The film, perhaps made to cash in on Romberg's popularity which was re-emergent with MGM's then-recent "Student Prince," does suffer from its cut-and-paste ethos, most notably in the peculiar and sporadic use of voiceover. We get quite a bit of narrative out of the way before Ferrer's voice appears briefly to bridge some sequences, and then almost an hour and a half later, toward the end of the film, Avedon suddenly appears out of nowhere on the soundtrack narrating a montage of about a decade late in Romberg's life, leaving the point-of-view rather muddled. This, coupled with a basic lack of drama (Romberg is successful within about five minutes of the film's start, and has no significant setbacks thereafter), are probably what has kept Deep in My Heart from achieving more renown or respect. But the music and the staged interludes certainly are as good as anything MGM was cranking out in those days, which is saying a lot.

Video: This transfer needs to be significantly color-timed in a few isolated spots. It is way too yellow at times (watch for instance the close-up on Traubel during her first solo). Otherwise, however, the enhanced 1.78:1 image is crisp with generally good saturation and contrast, with generally excellent color.

Audio: The 5.0 remastered soundtrack is one of the best in this set, with a nice, broad spectrum really well reproduced. While some may have minor quibbles about separation (a lot of the orchestral music is fairly centrally placed), the overall sound of this feature is excellent. There are English and French audio tracks and subtitles.

Extras: Two interesting outtakes are here, one featuring Traubel and another featuring (to my best estimation) George Murphy and, briefly, Esther Williams. There's also an audio outtake of "One Kiss." A Tex Avery cartoon "Farm of the Future" has some cute gags, but most interestingly there's a great short of Strauss waltzes performed under the baton of the great Johnny Green, who would go on to win Oscars for his work on West Side Story and Oliver!. Strangely this short, though in 1.78:1, is windowboxed in a 1.33:1 window so that even "zooming" on the image will not make it fullscreen.

Hit the Deck

Despite the fact that films like Born to Dance long predated it with certain similar plot elements, you may be forgiven if upon starting Hit the Deck you feel like you've wandered into On the Town: San Francisco. Anyone who knows Hollywood knows that once magic has struck, as it did with On the Town, it's only a matter of time before the premise is tweaked slightly and churned out again (as indeed it was with Anchors Aweigh. The fact is, however, that Hit the Deck is actually based on a Broadway musical from 1927 with music by the redoubtable Vincent Youmans, and so if anything, as groundbreaking as On the Town was, Hit the Deck actually has bragging rights for originality as far as a story built around shoreleave for sailors and the loves they find there goes.

That said, On the Town trumps Hit the Deck in virtually all categories, most notably in its then revolutionary use of location shooting. Hit the Deck, despite some brief establishing shots and the credits sequence, is about as studio bound and artificial as they come, despite its Cinemascope aspect ratio. And though On the Town strangely jettisoned a lot of the brilliant Bernstein Broadway score (in favor of Roger Edens originals), it at least even in its film adaptation caught the tenor of the times in a swing-influenced score full of perky rhythms and great close harmony. Though they've tried awfully hard to update Youmans' score for this 1955 film (actually produced in 1954), with a couple of nods to nascent rock 'n' roll rhythms and the like, there's only so much you can do with a warhorse like "Sometimes I'm Happy," none of it unfortunately helping to make it seem like something from another generation, which of course by then it was.

And that's a lot of what's wrong with Hit the Deck--it's a dinosaur of a show by any standards, full of tried-and-true MGM gimmicks (Jane Powell with her light-operatic song stylings, Ann Miller with her rapid-fire tap routines) that by 1955 had already been done (and often better) in other films. The whole enterprise has a tired, been-there done-that feeling that suppresses any of the soufflé that tries desperately to rise from time to time, notably in the sequences with Russ Tamblyn and Debbie Reynolds. Tony Martin, though in great voice, is heavy-lidded and not particularly magnetic, Ann Miller is mostly petulant and has so much caked-on makeup in a couple of scenes I expected her to fall over from the weight of it all, and Vic Damone, while pleasant, is just plain bland here.

It's instructive to notice that Hit the Deck is, from a behind-the-scenes standpoint anyway, full of frankly second-string MGM talent, so that in the orchestration department we get people like Will Beitel and Robert van Eps rather than Conrad Salinger and Alexander Courage, the director is Roy Rowland instead of Vincente Minnelli, and most importantly as producer the expert hand of Arthur Freed is missing and instead we get Joe Pasternak, who, while having overseen many OK if not great musicals (MGM's The Student Prince for example), never quite rose to the Freed level of magic in any of his productions. Even the A-list production staff, like choreographer Hermes Pan, were getting close to being past their prime at this point. Pan in fact only contributes one significantly inventive number, a neat duet between Tamblyn and Reynolds in a funhouse, where they interact with all sorts of moving walkways, trapdoors and various accoutrements to great effect. The two dance numbers with Miller, one a "character" piece where she dances barefoot, and another the standard Miller tap number, just seem stale, despite their technical excellence.

Video: Like some of the other films in this set, Hit the Deck is hampered by having been filmed in Eastmancolor, though I'm happy to report that in this instance there's actually good saturation and a surprising amount of pop to all the colors, something quite unusual in the Eastmancolor pantheon, perhaps because the prints were done by Technicolor. The enhanced 2:35:1 image is for the most part sharp, with few if any artifacts. There's the usual narrowing of the Cinemascope image on the edges due to it being "flattened" for television viewing.

Audio: Sad to say, there's something very wrong with the soundtrack of Hit the Deck. Though offered in both a remastered 5.1 and 5.0 version, the source material must be damaged, because you will notice very severe muffling starting at about 10 minutes in (in the first "exterior" San Francisco scene with Tony Martin, Vic Damone and Russ Tamblyn), and then reoccurring every few minutes for the bulk of the rest of the film. The final third of the film seems free of this unfortunate anomaly. While most of the dialogue comes through loud and clear (when it's not muffled), you'll notice an amped up use of reverb on a lot of the musical numbers, which make them seem like they're emanating from an invisible tunnel. There is also an extra music only audio track in 5.1, as well as English and French audio and subtitles available.

Kismet

Of course having a largely A-list cast and production crew does not automatically guarantee you a success, either artistically or financially, and 1955's Kismet is a glaring example of too much and too little at the same time. What should have easily been a staggering entertainment, considering its hit Broadway status, gorgeous score based on Alexander Borodin music (and featuring several then-current hits), exotic setting and colorful characters, the film adaptation of Kismet instead just sort of lays there like a beached whale: certainly there's a lot to look at, and even listen to, but there's little movement and after a while the whole thing starts to smell mightily.

While director Vincente Minnelli struggles mostly in vain to fill his Cinemascope screen with lots of people in mad splashes of hue, the film is hampered, as with so many MGM behemoths of this era, by simply being so obviously studio-bound. The streets of Bagdad are quite obviously the very clean, dirt-free streets of the MGM backlot, and even the occasional matte shots can't quite dispel the rampant artificiality of it all. Now that artifice itself can be quite engaging if handled properly (see Minnelli's own The Pirate for a good example), but in the lumbering treatment Kismet is afforded here, it's more glaringly obvious and distracting more often than not. There's a curious simultaneous ennui to this production coupled with an almost buffoonish lead performance by Howard Keel (and several supporting players) that makes the going pretty sticky most of the time. Unfortunately quite a bit of the original Broadway score was jettisoned as well for the film (something pretty standard in those days), and the incredibly evocative music was a lot of what gave the stage incarnation of Kismet its punch.

Which is not to say there aren't delights in Kismet, because there certainly are. Keel as a rhyme-happy beggar known as The Poet and Ann Blyth as his daughter Marsinah both sound magnificent, and Vic Damone as the young Caliph and Blyth's love interest is again pleasant, if undistinguished, and does a nice job vocally on "Stranger in Paradise," which became one of his biggest pop hits. But the movie really only comes alive when Dolores Gray, in all her bodacious and vocal splendor, literally bursts onto the screen and takes control, as the woman of the world Lalume. Gray, who strangely never quite made it as a film actress, despite impressive vocal chops and a striking, if not traditionally beautiful, appearance, has her filmic heyday here, in what is probably her best film role. Big, brassy and bawdy, Grey shows what this film could have been with a little more energy both on-screen and off.

Video: Though the 2.35:1 Cinemascope transfer is excellently sharp, it's plagued by hideous Eastmancolor, which in this case proffers an at once garish and pallid collection of weird greens and oranges that will strike any lover of Technicolor, especially Technicolor from the Golden Age (no pun intended), as simply very, very wrong.

Audio: Luckily both the remastered 5.0 and 5.1 soundtracks are extremely robust. The luxurious orchestrations and powerful vocals of its leads are all reproduced with superb fidelity, though, as usual, there's a not so occasional overuse of reverb. In fact if you were just to listen to Kismet, you might be convinced it was one of the all-time classics of the MGM oeuvre. This film offers English and Portuguese audio tracks, and subtitles in English, Portuguese and French.

Extras: In another odd transferring choice, there is the Cinemascope short "The Battle of Gettysburg" here, again offered in an unenhanced transfer. There's also a color cartoon, "The First Bad Man," a black and white outtake of the "Rahadlakum" sequence, an audio outtake of "Rhymes Have I," and probably most interesting to most lovers of the film, two excerpts from the George Murphy hosted series "The MGM Parade," both giving some nice behind-the-scenes shots of the movie being filmed.

Final Thoughts: Though some may argue with the term "Classics", and indeed even "Musical," for at least some of these films, the fact is there is such an abundance of pleasures, however sporadically placed in some of these, that any lover of this genre will have hours of pleasure watching these. Highly recommended.

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"G-d made stars galore" & "Hey, what kind of a crappy fortune is this?" ZMK, modern prophet